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'Hell's Kitchen': Corey, get ready to watch your back

April 9, 2008 | 7:17
am

Revenge might be a dish best served cold. But Corey can expect it to be red hot.

She was blasted last week on "Hell's Kitchen" as plain, boring, blonde and bland, but this week Corey showed her stripes after the women’s team found themselves facing elimination in the wake of a dreadful dinner service.

She made no bones about the fact that she was placing two teammates on the chopping block that probably didn’t deserve to be there. She said she nominated Christina “for strategic reasons” and Jen for personal reasons, adding “I want her out.”

The prize waiting at the end of this season, he said, was the biggest yet –- the job of executive chef at his new Los Angeles restaurant, opening this summer. There’s no time to be wasted playing games with someone he just couldn’t envision taking the reins. “There’s someone here that I just don’t believe in,” he said, and then ordered a surprised Sharon to doff her jacket and get the hell out of "Hell's Kitchen."

In retrospect, all the signs were there: Earlier in the evening he tore into the blonde who appears partial to frosty eyeshadow, sniping: “You’re not really a chef, are you? You’re just a showgirl with a feather coming out of your [bleeped by Fox censors.]” He also offered this parting shot after she’d already left the kitchen: “She clearly showed great attention to detail. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for her cooking. It was for her makeup.”

Corey, that was a risky gamble, and you lost. You may as well have painted a bull's-eye on your chef’s jacket as the rest of your teammates now know what you are capable of -– and Jen and Christina have every reason to try to undermine you every step of the way.

Other talking points for the water cooler:

--In a "Hell's Kitchen" first, the challenge -- producing picture-perfect halibut fillets -- ended in a tie. That led to a runoff –- a member of each team had to pick out the fillet weighing closest to a 6-ounce serving -- won handily by the men.

--Did anyone understand what in the world Rosann was thinking? She was playing the part of a server for the evening –- yet inexplicably held off putting in several orders, and then acted like she was doing it as a favor to the kitchen. (Completely unrelated aside: Man, does she have an accent.)

--Jason can certainly serve up the trash talk. Do you think he’ll be able to back it up? “I don’t lose to [bleeped by Fox censors] girls,” he said at one point. “What do you expect [from them] without a man to lead them all … a roomful of girls? That’s useless, unless they’re over there having a Tupperware party.”

--Louross. You still there?

--Kudos to whomever was involved in editing down Jen’s filibustering. The decision to intersperse her teammates snickering and even yawning behind her back as she went on and on and on and on and on and on about why she shouldn’t be kicked out of “Hell’s Kitchen” was brilliant.